


The Tourney Knight

by trulily



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Book canon au, Brienne following in Dunk's footsteps, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Inspired by the adventures of Dunk & Egg, Pining, Plotty, Renly is king, Roadtrip, some angst but also plenty of lightness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:33:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24151372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trulily/pseuds/trulily
Summary: An AU in which Brienne sets off for King's Landing to compete in King Renly Baratheon's tourney.Along the way to the capital, she discovers an ensnared Jaime Lannister. She decides to help him, and in so doing, she wins a crucial ally she did not realize she would soon so desperately need.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 46
Kudos: 132





	1. Kingslayer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The prisoner raised his head to look at her. His pale eyes flashed in the darkness. 
> 
> “Who are you?” she said. 

* * *

She set off from Evenfall Hall when the sun had not yet risen from the horizon, and the last few stars were fading. 

It was proving to be a brisk morning, with southern winds blowing across the straits of Tarth and filling _Goshawk’s_ proud white sails. Brienne stood alone at the prow with no company but the rush of the waves as they broke past the bow into a riotous, frothing spray.

Her legs were steady--she had been sailing since she was old enough to stand--but her stomach churned. _I have chosen this,_ Brienne told herself. It no longer mattered what her father said, or what Septa Roelle forbade. She closed her eyes and let the cold wind break over her face and rouse her. _I must not be afraid._

They tacked across the narrow water until the sun climbed high into the sky and they reached the inlet town that sat just south of Haystack Hall. They sailed that way because Old Lewys had business there, and he had taken Brienne and her stout gray courser, Promise aboard for the crossing as a kindness. 

When Old Lewys and his crew lowered the planks to let her horse cross over to the docks, Brienne took a couple of silver stags from the purse and held them out in her fist. 

“Please accept my thanks,” she said. 

The weathered merchant smiled but made no move to accept her coins. 

“Keep it, milady.” 

His refusal stung, but Brienne looked down at her hand before nodding dumbly and sliding the silver back into her coin purse. Brienne made a short bow to Lewys--she had long ago given up on curtsies--and led Promise ashore.

_He knows it not, but he does me a favor._

She had left Tarth with no more possessions to her name but her horse and her plate, shield, and sword, and the few coins she had dared take from her father’s treasury. What coin she had would suffice for a few warm meals, and if she was careful it would do for a modest tent to sleep beneath at night, but little more. 

She would have to guard her few belongings even more dearly than her coin, for they were her only stake in King Renly’s tourney. _A tourney knight is a wagering man,_ her father’s master-of-arms, Ser Goodwin, liked to say. _He must be ready to lose all he owns, even his life, if he is unlucky._

No women were welcome in the king’s tourney, nor in any other for that matter. She intended to enter not as Brienne of Tarth, heir to the Evenstar, but as a nameless hedge knight from the stormlands who had no more to his name than the sigil he bore on his shield. 

The sigil on the shield she had chosen from her father’s armory was a strangely decorative one, she supposed, with a field of blue and orange like a sky afire with the fading of the day, and a green shooting star striking across the sky above a solitary elm tree. But there was something about the shield that she liked, and so she had taken it down from the wall before stealing off in the night. 

_I will be a mystery knight_ , Brienne thought with some excitement as she mounted Promise and found the lesser road that would take her to the kingsroad.

She would let them call her whatever name they wanted. She had only to win at the lists once to make it through to the king’s melee of champions, and if she made it that far, she knew then she would not fail. Ser Goodwin had said so himself, she had an ox’s perseverance with a sword; maybe her footwork was not the most delicate, but she could plow on and outwait most foes. And when it was time to strike...

_I can beat them. I will just have to keep my helm on my head, then they will not know._

In truth, Goodwin had made her wince the first time he called her an ox. It was not a description many young highborn ladies might have liked for themselves. Still, even in that other meaning, he had not been wrong. Everything about her was ungainly. Her build was tall and broad, her fists meaty and her thighs wide and muscled, and her face was not the sort men wrote songs about. But for all her loathing of her appearance, Brienne knew that at least with her helm and full plate armor on, no one would suspect her, not even the ones who knew her. If she managed not to lose her helm in the lists or melee, they would not know she was a woman. She would become a champion. And if she became a champion, she could serve King Renly himself. That was worth the wager.

By evening, she had reached Haystack Hall. Its low sandstone walls glowered brightly in the fading sunlight. 

Inviting as the castle walls looked, Brienne would not stop inside for the night. It was the seat of House Errol, a household which was familiar within her father’s court on Tarth, and she didn’t think it was wise to make her presence or her purpose known to them. Instead, she hobbled Promise within a small grove of alder trees and set about to make camp for the night. 

Nightfall came swiftly, with a thick band of clouds sweeping rapidly across the sky. Brienne sat for some time by the fire she had made with her whetstone and sword, running the stone rhythmically over the blade’s edge and drifting off into thought about Renly and the tourney ahead of her.

By the morning, a soft rain had begun to fall. And as she broke down her humble camp and saddled Promise, the soft rain soon turned to a hard rain, and rivulets of water streaked down through the courser’s dappled velvet hair until he became a darker gray, and Brienne’s own tunic and hose darkened and sagged. 

She rode in the blowing rain for several hours until she found the kingsroad and hurried on for hopes of beating the storm to somewhere drier, but the downpour was unrelenting, and by evening she knew that without a tent she would have to endure a long cold night of lashing rain. _I will not manage to sleep at all in this wet_ , she thought with dread. So as night fell and no cluster of tightly packed trees where she might shelter for the night presented itself, Brienne was overjoyed to find an inn on the road. 

Light shone cheerily from its windows, and a cloud of woodsmoke hung suspended in the mist above its chimney stack. Her stomach growled as the smell of ash and yeast and meat drifted to her through the gloom. It wouldn’t be such a loss to spend a little of her coin there, she reasoned. She would use what she hadn’t spent on the crossing for a meal and a night’s stay. Brienne tugged her sopping hood closer over her head and spurred Promise toward the stable. 

She dismounted in the stableyard, her feet striking the sodden ground with a great splash, and gave Promise’s nose a thankful pat. 

“You’re in for some oats tonight, boy,” she said as she flicked his reins over his head and led him to where a young lad leaned in the frame of the stable door. 

Brienne squinted through the rain. 

“You there,” she said low and loud, “Will you see to my horse?”

The stableboy gave a hurried nod and took the reins from her at once. As he outstretched his hand to hers, however, Brienne saw that he was shaking. 

She felt her brow sink with pity. _He is more bone than boy. Maybe he’s trembling with cold._ As she left for the inn door, she resolved to pay well. _A little more so the child’s fed._

Inside the inn, a blazing fire crackled and spat within its hearth, and a rough-looking company of men sat talking and drinking flagons of ale. Brienne balled her fists within her cloak and pulled it closer around her frame. As she stood dripping by the entrance, she scanned the room for the innkeeper, who soon appeared from the kitchen balancing a board of roast capons and plates of boiled onion. The plump, short woman walked past her without so much as a greeting, carrying the fare to the men’s table. As she set it down, one of them reached out and caught her fat forearm in his fist and laughed. 

“Yurick,” another man chided, and the woman, now purple-faced, wrenched her arm free. That only made the foul man laugh louder. 

Brienne at last caught her attention as the innkeep waddled back toward the kitchen. 

“Have you room for one more, goodwoman?” said Brienne. She tried to keep her voice low so it would pass more easily for a man’s.

The woman looked up into her face. She still wore her hood over her head; its yellow fabric drooped pathetically over her brow and ears. 

“If you’ve the coin, and you suppose it worth the trouble,” said the woman through a pinched mouth. 

It was plain she was not eager to accept another strange man driven in by the rain.

“I mean you no trouble,” promised Brienne. “I’m on my way to the king’s tourney. I’ve been riding in this storm all day, and only want to wait it out. When it lets up in the morning, I’ll go on.”

The woman gave a sniff of her nose. “You mistake me. You’re better off in that rain. It’s four penny for a bed, two for ale if you’re wanting it. Two more for supper. Their lot’s eaten me out of capon so you’ll have to do with mutton and bread. My boy will see to you.” With that she turned and disappeared again into the back room, leaving Brienne to wonder at her meaning. 

A few moments later, the scrawny stableboy from before appeared at her elbow. She paid him for the meal and keep, and dropped a few extra pennies into his hand. He then led her up a rickety set of stairs to a small room with a single bed with a straw mattress that smelled faintly of mildew and urine. She saw he had already done the trouble of lugging her sack of armor into the room. 

“Thank you,” said Brienne. 

The boy bobbed his head. 

He hesitated a moment as though he meant to say something, his angular little jaw jutting and twitching, but he seemed to think better of it and instead said nothing. He went plodding back down the stair, and Brienne was alone.

A chill swept over her sudden as a wave on a rock. 

_Something isn’t right. That boy is frightened. The woman, too._

Brienne unclasped her cloak and pulled the rain-laden tunic over her head, letting both drop to her feet with a _thack_ before she stooped down and draped her clothes over the bedpost to dry. She then stood there in her wet chemise and hose, thinking. 

The boy had something to say. She could go down into the stable and find out what was the matter… 

Brienne chewed her cheek. In all likelihood, it had to have something to do with those men downstairs. What had they been wearing? She had not noticed, and now she cursed herself inwardly for being too thick to pay better attention. If she was going to interfere with these men, it would have been better to have an idea at least of who they might be. That was, if she should be interfering in the first place. In truth she did not need a bar fight with some unnamed louts; she needed to get to the tourney. It was her only way to steal Renly’s attention and bring herself to his side. He would never consider her for his kingsguard otherwise.

She shook a fresh tunic out of the sack and donned it over her chemise. The tunic was a stiff wool and hid her shape well enough, though she would have liked the comfort of her cloak. At least her hair was short as a man’s. She had shorn it off before leaving Evenfall Hall. 

She scrubbed a hand across the back of her neck, feeling the fine, wet hair there, and thought again of the stableboy and his bony jaw poking in and out as he struggled with his silence.

_It can’t hurt if I just talk to him. I could judge then if I should involve myself,_ she decided at last with a sigh. 

When she went down through the inn into the stable, though, the boy was nowhere to be found. In his stead was a burly man who stood gazing out into the rain. He was leaning against a longsword outside an empty stall and chewing on sourleaf, and seemed not to take notice of her.

Skewing her brow, Brienne turned to leave and search out the stableboy elsewhere, but just as she did, the man spied her.

“You there. Step out from behind that pillar,” he accused, lifting his sword to point its tip at her. 

_He’s guarding something_ , she realized. Brienne felt for her own sword at her hip, but did not dare draw the blade.

“I mean no quarrel, ser,” she made herself say. She sought a lie and mercifully found it. “I only came...to feed my horse some oats.”

“Fuck off with you,” he said, spitting a thick glob of sourleaf onto the floor. He did not lower his sword. 

Seeing he would not allow her to move any closer, Brienne raised her hands in dotish defeat. She backed away until her shoulders bumped against the doorframe, then ducked through and retreated back inside the inn. 

Wanting no more meeting with the men, Brienne took her supper of mutton stew in her room. She ate perched upon the edge of her bed, chewing the tough and gloppy stew and thinking all the while.

She knew she should not investigate any further, but something inexplicable was pulling at her, nagging. A deep sense of dread swirled in her stomach. She lay awake on the little straw mattress for several hours, listening to the rain pattering against the thatch roof. Gradually, the rain slowed, and a resolve settled in her. She would go once more into the stable, once the guard had fallen asleep. Then she could take Promise and ride off before the sun rose, and put this strange matter behind her.

When her tallow candle burned low, Brienne slipped once more from her room down the stairs and out the side-door which led to the stable. And as she had hoped, the guard sat stooped against the exterior of the empty stall, sleeping. Just one stall past where the guard slept was her courser, Promise. She crept that way, sword raised, until she reached the guarded stall and peered past. Just to look. Just to see what it was he had hidden within.

Not what, but who: It was the lumpen shape of a man who lay upright against the back of the stall. One of his arms was lashed to a rein post, and the other hung limply at his chest. His feet were hobbled with chain, and he was dressed all in putrid rags, as though he had been a prisoner for some time. Brienne stared back at him in the darkness.

Just then, the guard abruptly stirred, and the prisoner twisted with warning, and Brienne raised her sword arm and brought the butt of her blade down hard against his skull, driving him roughly to sleep again. She breathed out noisily as the guard’s head lolled and he fell unconscious to the floor. She looked down at her sword hand in shock. _Why did I do that?_

“That was well struck,” came a voice which was at once languid and hoarse.

Brienne peered again into the shadowed stall. 

The prisoner raised his head to look at her. His pale eyes flashed in the darkness. 

“Who are you?” she said. 

The man sagged forward, tugging a little at his restraints. “Untie me,” he insisted in that droll, grating voice. 

Brienne rubbed the pommel of her sword against her hip, heart racing, thinking. _If this man is dangerous…if he is a prisoner for good reason..._

“Who are you?” she said again. Her tongue felt leaden in her mouth, the words came out heavy and frayed.

He let out a coarse sound a little like a scoff. Then his bright eyes opened and shut and opened again, and Brienne watched some realization cross his features. “Gods, you’re a woman,” he announced into the darkness of the stall, and Brienne’s heart leapt into her throat as a cord of fear whipped through her. _How has he so easily seen?_ She squared her shoulders, hefting her sword in spite of herself. 

“Tell me who you are,” she growled.

“It doesn’t _matter_ , you cursed oaf,” he contested in a slightly more harried tone than before, mincing the words through his teeth, “not your identity nor my own. You wouldn’t know me.” He jiggled that arm against the pole again, tugging at the rope that bound him. As he did, his head sagged forward once more, and the mud-caked strands of his hair caught briefly in the faint light. His face was filthy, covered in muck and crusty streaks of blood and sweat, but Brienne could see that underneath all that, he had an unnatural sort of beauty. “Free me, go _on_ ,” he was imploring her. “Or kill me if you like -- there isn’t time.”

“I won't, not unless you give up your name,” she seethed, reeling. Something told her she ought to help this man, whoever he was, whatever his sin, but at the same time Brienne doubted herself. “Why should I free you? You could be a liar. You could be a murderer.”

“Yes,” he seemed to laugh. It rattled out from him like a dying man’s spittle-cough. “I could be a liar, how perceptive you are.”

“Your name,” she gritted out.

“My name!” he exclaimed in a whisper. He tutted his disbelief. 

She held out the sword resolutely, letting it hang in the air just above where his hand was lashed to the post. 

The man sighed, seeing she would not cave.

“Lannister. Jaime. Kingslayer,” he said. “Whichever pleases you less.”

Brienne felt her eyes go as wide as saucers. But if her surprise showed, the prisoner did not seem to care; he wagged his head, straining to see past her. 

“Now, quickly. Quickly, gods damn you. Cut.”


	2. The True King

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When she was done, she looked up again to find him resting his head against the shadowed boulder. His hair, which had been caked in mud and horse filth, had washed somewhat clean in the last of the storm. It shone like beaten metal.
> 
> “I suppose I should thank you for saving my life,” he said through half-shut eyelids.

Far away, distant thunder rumbled, and moments later, a flash of lightning illuminated the squalid stall where the lion sat ensnared in his trap. 

**“--** Gods damn you, cut. Cut me free, before it’s too late,” he was beseeching her, his eyes wild and burning with some inner flame, but Brienne was frozen where she stood. 

_His sword hand_ , she saw. _They’ve broken it._

It drooped pathetically against his chest, the wrist swollen and the fingers crimped in an odd direction -- an ugly sight. Brienne’s breath caught in her throat, her head throbbing. 

Whether she should help this man, she hardly knew. She couldn’t pretend to know much of court intrigue, she had never held interest in it nor did she possess the lady friends to whisper gossip to her, but every man, woman, and child in the entirety of Westeros knew Ser Jaime Lannister, the detested Kingslayer and brother-lover to the former queen. Brienne’s nostrils flared briefly with contempt as her thoughts spun rapidly. Why was he imprisoned in such a way? He was stained by depravity and countless ill-deeds, of that she had no doubt; he disgraced his very title as a knight from the moment he ran his sword through the Mad King’s back, all those years ago. And yet, she knew something about this was wrong. 

_These rough men within the inn, these men who have detained him, they are not the King’s men. They do not wear the crowned stag._

Just then, footsteps sounded behind her, slipping and splashing down heavy in the muck, and the Kingslayer groaned a warning, “Step quickly, oaf!”

She whirled, her sword arm held high, and faced them: two men, likely come to relieve the guard. She watched their eyes travel from their unconscious companion lying in the hay and back to her again. One of them was a lithe, bearded man, much smaller than her. He held a dagger in his fist. The other, a brutish man with a flat nose and a thatchy fray of ginger hair, hefted a sword to match her own. 

“I’d stop there if I were you, lad,” said the lithe man. 

“Drop your sword,” demanded the other.

“What is your business with this man?” Brienne asked. Her ears rang. _Do not let them see your fear._

“Are you deaf, or only stupid?” the ginger said. “I said, drop your sword!”

The thin man with the dagger touched the other lightly on the arm, as if to warn or admonish him, then stepped carefully toward her.

“This man is fleeing the King’s justice. You should not interfere.”

“The King’s justice?” spoke Brienne slowly. _They’re lying._ After King Renly had exposed the true pedigree of Cersei Lannister’s bastard children and ascended to the throne following Robert Baratheon’s untimely death, there had been a trial to root out the extent of the queen’s treason. She was found guilty and sentenced to die. Soon after, Joffrey, the eldest bastard son, made an attempt on King Renly’s life. For that crime, he was executed with his mother. Lord Tywin, Lord Tyrion, and Ser Jaime had all stood trial as well, yet those three were declared innocent of treason. Ser Jaime had been stripped of his title as Lord Commander of the Kingsguard and ordered to return to the westerlands with his father and brother. That much, Brienne knew for fact. Her father had shared the news with his entire court at Evenfall Hall when it had come on the raven’s wings.

“But there was a trial,” she went on. “King Renly has already pardoned him.”

The little man tutted out a laugh. The other spat at his feet.

“Not that pretender,” the larger man said. “The true king.”

A jolt of anger stabbed through her, and she clenched her jaw, her fingers clasping tightly around her sword’s grip. 

“You speak treason. King Renly is our true king.”

No sooner had the words left her lips did the brutish ginger lunge forward with a vicious blow, which she saw in time to step sideways and, swinging her sword across her body, push with the edge of her blade so the man’s sword glanced off against it with an awful scrape. Still, though she had caught it, she had caught it only just, and her arm and shoulder ached with the shock of the sudden jarring blow. 

_Move,_ she commanded herself, the Kingslayer’s taunt of warning ringing belatedly in her ears, _move quickly, oaf._

But the other man was already dancing forward, his dagger glinting in the wan light, and Brienne beat him off with two heaving cuts of her blade that caught empty air as he feinted away. From the corner of her eye, she saw the red haired man swing, but she met his blade once more with her own, pushing his sword off-point and then slamming her weight against his until he staggered broken aback, and in a heartbeat his blood was then spilling over the steel of her sword hilt, and he fell dead into the mud and hay. 

Brienne breathed out in ragged drafts, her head pounding, but there was no time to make sense of the dead man at the other end of her sword; the quick, lithe man was at her like a wasp, his dagger flashing, and Brienne yanked her sword free of the dead man’s chest with a startled cry. She drove her fist high and then down, bringing the weight of her arm and sword plunging down onto the little man’s and striking him in the neck with the brunt of her elbow. He fell splayed to the floor at once, the dagger dropping from his hand.

“Kill him,” coached the Kingslayer, long forgotten in his shadowed corner of the stall.

Brienne ignored him, her head dipped low and shoulders raised high to her ears. Her head pounded and thrummed with blood, her thoughts swimming as she stared at the three men collapsed before her. 

_What have I done?_

“No time for your damned remorse,” the Lannister said hoarsely. “Kill him and cut me down,” he insisted again, “before the others come running.”

That reached her. She shook herself, sheathing the sword at her hip and then stepping into the stall. With her dagger she cut the rope that bound his good arm to the rein post, and because his feet were still in iron shackles, she bent to pick him up.

He breathed out shortly with pain. 

Brienne looked down at him. His mangled hand had pressed against her chest when she wrapped her arms around him to lift him from the floor. He curled it protectively against his stomach.

“Careful,” he seethed.

Bizarrely, she felt her cheeks rush with sudden warmth, but she nodded. With some effort, she got him onto Promise’s back and climbed into the saddle behind him, and with a clack of her tongue and a kick of her legs they bolted off through the misting rain.

Morning had long broken by the time they put good distance between themselves and the inn. By Brienne’s estimation, they had made it to the many miles of densely forested hills of the Kingswood, but she’d taken them off the kingsroad to the ride further west a ways. There, off the road, the terrain was rougher, and the band of Ser Jaime’s captors would be less likely to track them.

She slowed Promise to a walk when Jaime spoke.

“You didn’t kill that man, the one with the dagger. You should have listened to me and done it,” he said. His voice had a faraway sort of sound to it, like he was half in a dream. She was silent in response. _I did not want to. But maybe the Kingslayer is right. He was an enemy of the Crown. And now he knows my face._

A shudder went through her, which Jaime must have perceived. He lolled his head back to look at her, it rocked almost meekly against her chest. His eyes--green eyes, she realized, green and laughing like a cat’s--swept over her face as though searching for something there before drifting down along her arm which pressed him to steady him to her chest.

“You’re hurt,” he observed.

And she was. In the immediate aftershock of the scuffle, she had not noticed it for some time, but as the clouds had cleared and the rain had stopped, the pain in her torso occurred to her with a growing, burning insistence.

“The dagger,” she replied in simple explanation. It caught her side when the lithe man had attacked the second time, before she managed to knock him unconscious. It had pierced her well. Beneath her arm, her tunic was wet with blood. _If only I had been wise enough to put on my armor before sneaking back to the stable._ It bounced useless in the sack across Promise’s arse.

“We’ll stop here, for now,” she said then, and she reined the horse to a halt behind an outcropping of crumbling boulders.

Brienne dismounted and lugged Jaime somewhat artlessly from the saddle after her, though taking care this time not to jostle his wounded arm. She sat him back against the boulders, then fetched a skein of water and offered it to him before sinking down onto a stone to examine where she’d been cut.

“How bad is it?” he said. 

She looked up from her torso to gaze across at him, and was surprised to see him looking on with what appeared to be genuine concern.

“Tear off some of your shirt. Press it to the wound,” he said when she did not answer.

She took her dagger from her sword belt and stretching her tunic away from her skin made a cut at its edge, and then pulled the wool fabric so it ripped in a long band. She balled this against the gash, which was not so wide as it was deep, and braced it with a second strip she tore and then knotted and wrapped around her middle. 

When she was done, she looked up again to find him resting his head against the shadowed boulder. His hair, which had been caked in mud and horse filth, had washed somewhat clean in the last of the storm. It shone like beaten metal.

“I suppose I should thank you for saving my life,” he said through half-shut eyelids.

_He is still the Kingslayer._

“That will do for thanks,” she replied brusquely.

A faint smile curled along his lips. It was not a pleasant smile; it was the smile of a man too used to scorn.

“You haven’t yet undone my chains,” he accused then, giving an explanatory shake of his feet, though he spoke it in such a distant way it sounded more to Brienne like another of his observations. 

She retorted, “You haven’t yet proved your innocence of whatever it was that got you into trouble with those men.”

“Innocence!” he laughed. She remembered how he had laughed before, when she had asked him for his name. It made her feel foolish. 

“Yes, innocence,” she said.

His jaw clenched, and the humor drained from his voice. The next words he spoke he spat out with clear contempt, one after another, and each lanced into her sharp as the cut from any dagger: “You’re a funny wench. Half the world already assumes me guilty -- If only I had done all the ill deeds they so desperately believe of me. Enough. Who are you to ask my innocence? I'm not so dull to believe you’re some giantess scullery maid who chose the wrong evening to poke her nose where she shouldn’t have. You’re uncommon large and the perhaps ugliest woman I ever saw, but you _are_ quick with a sword. Tell me who you are. How did you come upon me in the inn?” 

“Chance,” she said, and his mouth skewed into a snarl, but she pressed on before he could interrupt her, “it was chance that brought me to that inn, and nothing more. I am on my way to King’s Landing to compete in the tourney there. The same storm that no doubt waylaid your captors pushed me to seek shelter in the inn.”

“That's ridiculous. You are a woman,” he cut back. 

“I am. I am a woman, yes. My name is Brienne of Tarth. I still mean to enter the tourney,” she replied, her voice rising, “and I mean to win.”

At that, Ser Jaime Lannister sank back to lean once more against the boulder, and was silent. Above them, in the canopy of the trees, larks sung their spinning, dizzy song. Brienne felt just as dizzied.


	3. The Road to the Tourney

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Why?”
> 
> She looked up to find him watching her. 
> 
> In the diffuse pre-dawn light, his eyes were dark and difficult to read. She made herself straighten her back and drop her shoulders slack. He is considering how much to tell me, she thought. He is considering if he can trust me.

It was some time later that his voice awakened her. 

“Are you rested?”

She opened her eyes with a start. The sky had darkened considerably, the branches above them were a dark net of interlaced fingers that swayed against a backdrop of pink and violet clouds. 

_I must have dozed._

In the hours since she had first discovered the Kingslayer in the inn and rode away with him, she had not slept at all, and as they sat talking in the afternoon light, the warmth of the rocks and the spinning larksong must have overtaken her like a sorcerer’s spell.

“Why didn’t you wake me?” she said, rising abruptly from where she had been sitting. As she regarded him, she felt her cheeks flush with anger and embarrassment. _The truer question is, why didn’t he take one of the loose stones and smash his chains apart? And what has stopped him from doing the same to my skull?_

It took him some time to answer. But he said, “I thought it better to let you sleep than have you fall from your horse and kill us both.” He gave a roll of his shoulders, a gesture which he carried off irritatingly well even in his tattered clothing. “They haven’t discovered us, but we should move on from here.”

She loathed that she had been so careless to drift off in his presence, but she couldn’t argue with that. It was unwise to linger long with that band of men from the inn still likely in pursuit. She drew the sword from its scabbard at her hip, crossing to where he sat. _I’ll break those chains now. If he wants to run, let him run. I shouldn’t care where he goes._

“Move your legs,” she said.

“That’s an unlikely proposition,” said the Kingslayer, and ire licked up through her throat like a cord of flame. But he parted his legs, stretching the chains between his ankles as taut as he could, and awaited her blow. “Don’t miss.”

Brienne refused to meet his eyes. She brought the sword down onto the chains with a single heaving blow, and steel parted iron with an ugly metal crash.

“Thank you.” He bent to rub at his feet where the shackle cuffs still dangled from his ankles. 

“Let me,” she said, and she stooped down before his feet to knock at the shackles with a bit of stone. They were hastily forged, and came apart after some knocking with the stone. 

As the shackles fell away, Brienne’s gaze drifted to the bare skin of his legs, and she sucked in a breath. The restraints had chaffed up and down his ankles, turning the skin there blistered and raw. 

It was not a pretty sight, though his sword hand was worse. The fingers were badly bent, and his wrist at the wrong angle and the fingertips of his hand worryingly pale -- as though the blood were choked off, like a dammed-up stream.

Looking at it made Brienne’s stomach turn over. She had never broken any bone except her nose, but she had seen breaks before. Once she’d seen the squire to a third cousin take a hard blow in the training yard at Tarth. The boy had thrown out his shield arm to break his fall, and as the point of the shield crashed into the dirt, his wrist was driven backwards. She could still remember the snap and the yowls that rose up from the yard as the poor boy twisted in the dust, cradling his ruined hand. She knew how that story had ended for the squire, and so she knew sympathy for Ser Jaime Lannister. He might never lift a sword again.

She cleared her throat. “Well, you are freed. But you need a maester.”

“You more than I. That cut will need to be sewn shut,” he said, “if you mean to win your tourney, as you say.”

She moved a hand over the knotted cloth at her abdomen. The bleeding seemed to have stopped, but the pain hadn’t. Brienne turned from him and made short work of unhobbling Promise, in spite of the sting of the knife wound at her waist. However accustomed to it she was, she did not like being taunted.

 _He laughs at me_ , she thought. _His words say concern, but his tone says mockery._

“It’s not _my_ tourney,” she said as she pulled the girth belt of Promise’s saddle tight. She hated the way the words came out, with the empty petulance of a child. She chewed at her cheek and tried to change the subject. “And what about your hand? The bones need to be set, or else--”

“You might be mistaken for many other things besides a lady, but I don’t believe a maester would be among them,” he said in a voice so low and cruel it turned her skin to gooseflesh. 

Seeing he had succeeded in silencing her, he then said, “My hand is lost. So do me a kindness and stop your play-act of pity, and let’s get on.”

 _But I do pity you._ Whatever she had once thought of Ser Jaime Lannister the brother-lover and Kingslayer, however much he attempted to menace her and bully her with words, the man she saw before her was a wounded, cornered thing; a lion with a broken paw. 

“You mean to return to King’s Landing?” she asked.

Daylight was dropping fast as the sun fell away beyond the hills and trees. The lengthening shadows blanketed Brienne and Jaime in their dusky blues, but Brienne could still plainly pick out the features of his face as he stared across at her. He wore the same dark irony she’d seen on him before, in the make-shift cell of the stable. 

“Where else?”

…

  
They rode through the night, the moonlight seeping through the branches of the kingswood moving over them in waves of dappled light. 

It was an intimate thing to ride two to a saddle. Ser Jaime Lannister sat in front of her as he had before, and she kept one arm clapped tight over his waist to secure him to her as they made their course through the dark woods. With his back pressed lightly to her, she felt his every muscle; Brienne could tell he had the frame of a well-built man but he was shrunken and slight within it, as though he had begun to waste away. She wondered how long he was imprisoned by those men. She wondered long he had been wasting away even before he was captured. He had only recently lost everything, she supposed. His sister-lover and his first child were both executed for their treason, and he had been stripped of his position as the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard and ordered to return to Casterly Rock. Despite all their wealth and the power they had ascended to in the last years, the Lannisters were a disgraced family now, spat on and distrusted by the whole of Westeros. But no matter how her knowledge of his sins made her stomach writhe and turn, she could surmise this man was one imprisoned by grief, and that touched something gentler within her, something softer and deeper down than reproach.

Ser Jaime didn’t seem to be ignorant of their closeness, either. At one point, he touched her on the arm and said she needn’t grasp onto him so tightly. “I thank you, Lady Brienne, but I am stronger than just any damsel.”

Blushing, Brienne had relented, relaxing her grip on him. It was the first time he had not called her oaf or wench but her name, yet still he said it in tease.

 _He does sit where a maiden should._ She did not know what would have scandalized Septa Roelle more, the nearness of their bodies as they rode, or that she played the role of the knight in rescue, and he the maid. 

...

Sometime before dawn, they stopped near a gurgling stream. Brienne stepped down from the saddle and held out a hand to help him down after her, but Ser Jaime slid down of his own accord.

“How much further is capital from here?” she asked while she saw to Promise. 

Ser Jaime cast a calculating look about the forest. The kingswood was immense. _It seems to carry on forever,_ thought Brienne.

“Some time still,” he weighed. “The better part of a day.”

She nodded. 

“We’ll stop here awhile, an hour maybe, then we’ll continue on,” she said. Promise had carried the both of them for two long stretches now, and would need to be rested.

“We may as well sleep,” said Ser Jaime. 

Brienne lifted the saddle off of Promise’s back and set it down on the forest floor. 

“But those men from the inn, won’t they only try to make off with you again? Shouldn’t we press on?” 

“No,” said Jaime, “they will know I’ve gone back for King’s Landing, and they can’t gain much from winkling me away a second time.”

“Why?”

She looked up to find him watching her. 

In the diffuse pre-dawn light, his eyes were dark and difficult to read. She made herself straighten her back and drop her shoulders slack. _He is considering how much to tell me. He is considering if he can trust me._

Absurdly, she almost wanted to tell him that he could. _Who would I tell his secrets to?_ she thought, half with chagrin. But Brienne said nothing, and Ser Jaime did the same. She pressed a comb over Promise’s heavy, sweat-drenched thigh and knocked the salt and dust away. 

Although he had not assured her of why precisely he was confident his captors would not deter them from King’s Landing now, they soon made camp from Brienne’s few supplies. As the sun rose, a small fire crackled in its pin of rocks, and Promise grazed idly from her feedsack while Brienne sat on a log whittling at a bit of stick. 

The nearby stream was a bubbling ribbon of water that ran down from the hills and collected into a pond before them. Its waters were turning rose and lavender with the meek light of the dawning sun.

“Lady Brienne,” said Jaime, drawing her attention away from her whittling, “I don’t want to return to King’s Landing looking like a beggar and smelling of horsepiss. You wouldn’t have another tunic?”

There was another tunic and a set of wool breeches in her saddlebag. “I do.” 

“Good,” he said, then without further ceremony he tugged the wretched shirt over his head, pulling the sleeve gingerly over his ruined hand and cursing as he did. 

Brienne gaped at him. “What are you doing?” 

“Bathing,” he replied, and he scrambled down into the pond, sending out a fan of rosey ripples along its surface. 

She hastily averted her eyes to the treeline above her. 

“The lady Brienne, timid as a milkmaid,” he laughed. “That will certainly scare your fellow knights on the tourney field.”

“I won’t be Lady Brienne on the tourney field,” she protested, still watching the trees.

“No?” he said. There was laughter still in his voice. “But think; there is a nice ring to Ser Brienne, the Maid of Tarth. Pity!”

Brienne tore her stare down from the canopy above her and looked at him. The Lannister was splashing water over his head and scrubbing away the filth from his arms that had not washed away with the rains, a smile writ over his mouth as he did.

“You tease me, ser,” she said through gritted teeth. “To them I will be nothing and no one. But if you must call me something, call me Brienne.”

He lifted his eyes to meet her stare. His voice sobered. “Brienne then.”

Somehow, his gaze made her bold. 

“What happened to your hand?” she asked. “Why did they do this to you?”

He might have been the Kingslayer, but she could not understand why he had been tortured and maimed in this way. It was a cruelty no woman or man deserved, even one so soiled as he. _Why did those men steal him away at all? And why were they taking him to the stormy coast?_

Jaime halted his splashing and scrubbing in the pond water, his ruined sword hand cradled limply to his chest.

“Tell me, Brienne,” he said, “how much love do you have for your King Renly?”

Her mouth dropped open to speak, fresh indignation shooting along her spine and turning her obdurate as a trunk of wood, but he went on without her answer. 

“Plainly, enough to leave your stoney isle and fight among men for the honor of becoming one of his champions. From the capering of lords and bed-followers alike in King’s Landing, I grant you you are not alone in your adoration. Men and women hang about his perfumed feet, hoping for a chance to ascend in the same wind as he. No, don’t be angry, I only tell you the truth of your beloved king -- that he is beloved, which is more than many kings can boast. If you will believe anyone’s word on that count, believe mine. And you may believe my indifference as well. I have had my share of kings, and am at last dismissed from heeding them. Or haven’t you heard?”

Jaime was naked from the waist up in the water. Briefly, in that moment, his chest and arms glowed golden in the light from the rising sun. She ought to have been affronted by his plain dislike of the king, and she might have been, were his disdain for all court life not equally apparent. Instead, she was puzzled, frozen, ensnared. _He is like a god,_ thought Brienne of a sudden, watching the golden light caress his shoulders and face, but that was not fully right; in spite of his beauty, the man before her was a sad, bitter figure. 

_Who are you, really, Ser Jaime?_

The light faded and enclosed him in the soft cool blue of morning. 

“Renly is loved, yes,” he said, gazing up at her. “But know this. Renly is not loved by all. Least of all, by his elder brother, Stannis.”


	4. The Elm Knight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 'I must get to Renly. I must survive the lists to the king’s melee,' she thought. All the talk of Stannis and her dream the last night had disquieted her, and it seemed to Brienne more dire than ever that she beat her way toward the king’s pavilion. 'If I can only win his favor and join his Kingsguard, I can watch over him and make sure no harm will come to him.'
> 
> “You’ll need coin all the same,” the Lannister said, interrupting her thoughts.

The stink of the capital reached Brienne’s nose long before she set eyes upon it. It was a putrescence unlike anything she had ever smelled before, one that clanged and buzzed in her nostrils and sent a shiver down the nape of her neck. In many an idle moment in the lonely corridors of Evenfall Hall, she had taken some pleasure in imagining the city where Renly now kept court, but never in her imagining did she dream a place so grand could smell so foul. 

As they descended the last hill toward the cluttered sprawl of King’s Landing and the vast village of tents and pavilions that had sprung up outside its gates to accommodate the king’s tourney, she did not think of the tilts and the trials that would await her on the melee fields. Her thoughts were instead filled with the conversation she and Ser Jaime shared the night before. 

“Renly is not loved by all,” Ser Jaime had said _._ “Least of all, by his elder brother, Stannis.” 

“There has been talk of bitterness between them, true, but surely you don’t mean Lord Stannis would betray his own blood,” Brienne had replied, and that earned a laugh from the Lannister bathing before her in the little pond.

It was Stannis’ men who apprehended Ser Jaime following his trial, the Kingslayer divulged. Stannis’ men who had hidden him away, questioned him, and maimed him when he would not give them what they wanted. Though that was all he said on that, for a time; he japed at her and bade her turn her back so he could dry himself before dressing in Brienne’s spare clothes.

Later, though, as a cookfire smoked between them, Brienne summoned the nerve to ask. “But what did they want?”

“What does a traitor ever want?” the Kingslayer said. He prodded the fire with the heel of his boot, and sparks leapt lazily to the air. “They wanted what would make him strong and his foes weak, him cunning and them blind, without revealing his position. Information.” 

“You did not answer them?” 

“No.”

Brienne was startled by the starkness of his reply, and even more so by the weight that laid behind it. Could this really be true? Did Stannis mean to rise up against his brother, and had his men pressed Ser Jaime to inform on the King? 

She remembered what his captors had said before: _Not that pretender,_ the larger man had said. _The true king_. The memory made her heart pound. And yet, she wanted to discover the lie in Ser Jaime’s story. He was a traitor himself, from a traitorous family, and she was loath to believe the tale of his capture and captors was as straightforward as all that. Surely he jested or was otherwise stretching the truth.

“If you are suggesting Lord Stannis is moving against the King, this is a very great claim,” she ventured.

“Too great for the Maid of Tarth, I see,” said Ser Jaime, and that had made her cheeks flame and her head burst with questions and rebuttals, though she asked no more, and he spoke no further. Whatever trust he had placed in her had plainly vanished, like water hissing away into steam. 

They had gone to bed with an anger between them. She could not know what he took to his dreams that night, but she slept fitfully, and dreamed of a long echoing corridor which she walked down in darkness for what felt like an eternity. Then, from the darkness she saw a lone shadow of a man appear, though his back was turned to her. “Renly,” she called out with joy, and she reached for his shoulder to turn him towards her, to tell him, “See, I have come for you, come to guard you and keep you,” but when her fingers caught the black fabric of his cloak, he rippled out from under her and disappeared, and the cloak spread to the floor at her feet in an inky pool, and dread filled her mouth like blood.

The same dread clung to her that next morning as they rode, still two to a saddle, down toward the city gates and the village of tents that lay outside them; her thoughts were noisy with it when Ser Jaime spoke. 

“You’ll need your wound sewn shut,” he was reminding her. His voice hummed against her chest. “Although I take it you won’t betray yourself to the king’s new maester.”

He spoke pleasantly enough, but she knew he meant to prick her with that small word, betray. Brienne straightened in the saddle.

“No,” she said. They were getting closer to the tourney grounds, and soon they would have to stop so Brienne could put on her armor to better disguise her sex. A maester would pry and find her out too quickly, and most certainly would bar her from entering the lists upon discovering she was no more a man than she was an anointed knight. 

This was an inconvenience to be sure, one she had fretted over during their ride, but from the tales she’d heard in the sword hall at Tarth there was plenty of industry that sprung up reliably on tourney grounds: cooks and armorers and mummers and whores all arrived to ply their trades in these fleeting towns of tents, and no doubt there were among them simple mending men who distinctly lacked a maester’s chain but who all the same could sew a gash or set a nose or sell a poultice. She would find a quiet one to see to the cut Ser Jaime’s captors had given her. 

Then there was the matter of entering her name for the lists… She would use her armor, her sword, her courser, and the little gold she had as her ransom to enter, and she would have to hope the master of the lists would not inquire closely into her provenance. As she planned to enter as a mystery knight, and the king’s tourney would be swollen with hedge knights and great men alike, it was possible no one would look twice at her. She prayed to the Warrior that this be so. 

_I must get to Renly. I must survive the lists to the king’s melee_ , she thought _._ All the talk of Stannis and her dream the last night had disquieted her, and it seemed to Brienne more dire than ever that she beat her way toward the king’s pavilion. _If I can only win his favor and join his Kingsguard, I can watch over him and make sure no harm will come to him._

“You’ll need coin all the same,” the Lannister said, interrupting her thoughts.

Brienne regarded the top of his head. She had picked him up dirty and beaten from a stable stall, and she doubted he had a coin purse hidden on him. 

He appeared to grasp the meaning of her silence. 

“I have business within the city I must attend to, but when I return I’ll seek you out in the tourney grounds and repay you the debt I owe.” 

“I don’t want your coin, ser.” 

He sighed in annoyance. 

“You’re every bit as upright as that elm you bear on your shield. Can nothing reach you?”

To her dismay, his exasperation drove a flush to her cheeks once again. The faces of her false suitors swam abruptly before her, laughing, and Red Ronnet Connington’s roses scattered in her vision. She was stout, stolid, and withdrawn, she knew; she did not have the capricious manners of a lovelier woman. In some respects, she was so dour because it would be ridiculous for a woman of her appearance to comport herself in any other manner. This was, though, what those young suitors had found so easy to assail. A more difficult target might have laughed with them. Brienne could only stand upright and suffer them. 

_It reaches me,_ she found herself wanting to say to the Kingslayer, _it all reaches me, every word,_ but she did not. She was glad Ser Jaime rode in the saddle in front of her rather than astride his own horse alongside her, so at least her expression was hidden from him. 

The kingswood was thinning, and the din of the tourney grounds grew louder as they approached. She would need to make her camp away from the thick of the tourney goers, where prying eyes were less likely to find her. Brienne reined Promise to a stop beside a stand of pines. 

“I’ll part with you here, Ser Jaime,” she heard herself say. Her voice was thick in her ears.

The Kingslayer slid down from Promise’s back, his hand cradled against his chest. 

His green eyes flashed up to her. 

“Lady Brienne,” he said, and he bent at the waist ever so slightly before turning and walking on the winding, widening path that led beyond the tourney grounds to the King’s Gate. 

Brienne watched him for a time. Then she squeezed Promise with her thighs, and she went off further from the path into the shaded woods.

After she raised her small tent among the trees and brushed and hobbled Promise, Brienne bound her chest with cloth, donned her mail and armor and helm, and slung her shield with its elm across her back. Then she made her way down into the sea of pavilions and waving banners to find a mending man to sew her cut. 

In time she discovered a such a man at the fringe of the tourney grounds, far away from the great pavilions of the champions and great houses and the proudest stalls that were erected to tempt the wealthy with decorous helms wrought from twining steels and freshly baked meat pies and laughing young maidens twisting their hair in their hands. The man she found beckoned her into his sagging tent and asked no questions and appeared to entertain no suspicions of a young nobody-knight when Brienne undid her chest plate, lifted the hem of her shirt several inches, and asked in a rumbling voice that her wound be mended. 

As she left the mender’s tent, her wound sewn and dressed and her coin purse lightened, she wandered past the other few tents that leaned and swayed at the edge of the grounds. There was a dingy shield-maker’s stall where a young girl was peddling pine and oak shields, and briefly Brienne considered casting off the one she had chosen from her father’s armory to take up a plain one instead, one that was undecorated and unremarkable. Something plain would suit her better than the one she bore across her back. It seemed maudlin to her now, with its elm tree above which a single star fell in a lovely arc, and Ser Jaime’s taunt was still echoing through her thoughts. _Every bit as upright as an elm tree,_ he had said, and her ears burned _._ But she already had a shield, ridiculous as it might have been to Ser Jaime, and she told herself it would be wiser to save her coin. So she went on her way.

Brienne wove her way through the growing crowds until she reached the grand pavilion belonging to the master of the lists, with whom all knights who hoped to compete in the jousts and melee had to register their names and titles. _Warrior help me,_ she prayed again, and entered the tent. 

Inside, she found it empty aside from the crackling of a fire in its brazier. At the center of the pavilion was a broad oak table, and across it lay the master of the lists’ book. She walked to it, sweating in her heavy plate and helm, and gazed through her visor at the names written within it. 

At the top of the list were the names of Renly’s favorites, knights rumored to soon ascend to the new Kingsguard he was forming. There was Ser Robar Royce the Red, then Ser Bryce Caron, Lord of the Marches, and the rash Ser Emmon Cuy and unsmiling Guyard Morrigen and lean Ser Parmen with his sigil of golden cranes. And of course there was Loras Tyrell, Knight of the Flowers and elder brother to the beautiful Lady Margaery Tyrell.

Beneath these names were a hundred score more, names belonging to sons from great houses, and other names Brienne had never heard before. There were a few mystery knights in there, she saw, one that called himself Blackbeak, and another that was styled as The Weeper. But at the very bottom of the list, in a scrawling, uneven script, someone had written _The Elm Knight._

The tent flap dropped behind her with a sudden swish, and Brienne turned to see a stooped old man robed in green with a sash of black and silver across his chest. He ambled toward her and seated himself behind the table.

“I-I wish to enter the lists,” Brienne rumbled to the man in as low a voice as she could manage.

His gaze drifted from her longsword to the shield she bore across her back. 

“A mystery knight. Yes.” The master of the lists gestured to the book before them, and he arched an eyebrow at her. “Your entry has been noted and paid.” He lifted a coin purse from the table as demonstration. It was sewn of crimson velvet and a fine gold brocade.

The man picked up his quill and wet it with ink, carrying on with sums on some other parchment while Brienne stood dumbstruck before him. 

Her eyes fell again on the badly scrawled name. 

_Ser Jaime,_ she thought.


	5. Suitors

Brienne awoke early, breaking her fast on a crumbly cheese pie she bought from a baker’s stall with her spare coin. Each bite was filling and buttery and lovely, and as she chewed it and swallowed it down with gulps of cool stream water, her thoughts were fixed on the gesture Ser Jaime had made by entering her into the lists and paying her ransom. 

The Elm Knight, he had called her; the memory of the scrawled name wound knots into her stomach, and having seen those three short words written in his hand all his teasing from the kingswood seemed to blur and soften. Yet somehow she felt ever more the fool. 

_He has done me this kindness because I set him free_ , she reasoned. The Lannisters may have been disgraced, but they were still wealthy. Her ransom would have been no great object for him to pay. And now whatever debt he felt between was paid. In all likelihood he was already riding hard to rejoin the rest of the Lannisters at Casterly Rock; she could only assume they would never exchange another word. 

Though she could not say why, that thought turned the savory taste of her breakfast to bitterness on her tongue. 

She summoned Renly to mind, trying to picture him as she had seen him upon her visit to Highgarden, with his black hair falling over his shoulders as he bent forward in laughter at some jest Loras made, his blue-green eyes lit with mirth. Still, the bitterness hung on her tongue and her chest was tight with sadness, and as she dressed herself in her mail and armor, her thoughts were drawn back again to Jaime Lannister, the man who had known too much scorn. 

...

As the morning waned and the sun climbed higher in the sky, a blare of trumpets heralded the opening of the tilts. Brienne descended from her little camp and pressed her way through the gathering crowd that was thronging to the viewing stands. 

At the front of the crowd stood a line of lowly knights and their squires, men Brienne could only presume to be of lower birth or entirely without land and title. She joined them to watch as the king’s favorites reined their mounts in tight circles on the grassy lists, rousing cheers from the crowds as they one by one turned and rode past the king’s pavilion, their sigils waving upon banners carried afoot by pages. The first tilts would be between these great men, with the lesser competitors entering later into the day. 

Ser Bryce Caron and Ser Guyard Morrigen opened the tourney with a fierce display. Four times the men ran the lists at each other and each time a strike was landed, though neither man was unhorsed. The crowds roared upon the fifth run, as Ser Bryce’s lance steered straight into the black crow of Ser Guyard’s shield and at last sent him toppling. Next was Ser Emmon Cuy and Ser Parmen Crane, followed by a decisive match between Robar Royce and the red apple of Fossoway, Ser Tanton. 

After each tilt, Brienne’s gaze wandered to the king’s pavilion, where Renly sat with his Hand, Ser Cortney Penrose, along with Olenna and Mace Tyrell, Lady Margaery and her cousins, and a man she assumed to be Petyr Littlefinger. Renly looked on intently the whole while, clapping when one of his knights landed a particularly elegant blow, and offering smiles to the victors when they bowed before him. _He is every bit a king,_ thought Brienne. Seeing him presiding so gallantly over the tourney, she could almost forget Ser Jaime’s hinted warnings that perhaps there were those who would contest Renly’s early reign.

By midday her ears were sore from the clapping and cheering of the crowds, and she turned from the lists to seek out a quiet place where she could drink from her water purse. As she pushed through, though, a man stepped in front of her, blocking her path. 

Brienne regarded him through her visor and recognized him at once. 

“Ser Hyle Hunt,” the hedge knight offered. 

She stared down at him. 

Unlike her, Hunt was dressed in plain clothes and was unarmored, which she took to mean he would not bother to enter the lists until the next day, when other lesser knights would already have spoiled their chances of advancing and when his own chances would thereby be better. Brienne knew Hyle, and knew that to be within his character.

The trouble was, Ser Hyle Hunt knew her as well. 

When she did not volunteer a greeting in response, he hallo’ed to some men who were leaning at the fenceposts nearby. “Sers,” he called, “I think we’ve found one of our mystery knights!” 

Brienne looked in the direction of the men he addressed. Her stomach fell. 

There they all were, the pack of false suitors who had delighted in their mockery of her at Highgarden: Ser Richard Farrow who had played her ridiculous verses on his lute, Ser Edmund Ambrose who gifted her with flowers, Ser Mark Mullendore whose monkey had once so cheered her, along with Beesbury, Big Ben Bushy, and Will the Stork. Will had been the one to give away their game by clutching onto her and asking her if he could rub the knots from her shoulders after catching her on her way back from the training pitch. 

The two hedge knights, Will and Hyle, had proved the nastiest of the bunch. She hated Will for his suggestive touches, touches that caused red welts of shame to bloom over her neck and face. For his pleasantness, his companionable laughter, and his deceit of friendship, however, Hyle was worse still. Beneath her visor, Brienne’s face felt hot with anger.

Ser Edmund and Will the Stork walked to join them. 

“Well met, Elm Knight,” Ser Edmund Ambrose said over the din of the crowd.

When she again gave no reply, the thin and gangly Will turned his face up at her with a sneer. 

“Mute Knight, more like? You have to wonder at the vanity of men who chose to enter under a disguised banner.”

“Careful, Will,” said Ambrose with a good natured smile, “This one may be shy, but he’s tall and built like a fortress, and if you challenge him I would put my wager to his favor, not yours. After all, perhaps that’s a Clegane under there, you know what the younger’s said to be like.”

By then Farrow and Mullendore had both pushed their way over as well. 

“Of course it’s not the Hound, man,” interjected Ser Richard Farrow in his lazy voice. “The Clegane dogs went back with the lions to their den, and remain there to lick their masters’ arses.” Farrow looked her up and down. “He is the size of a giant, though, I’ll grant you that.”

“Is this your first tourney, ser?” asked Mark Mullendore. 

“No,” Brienne lied in a low, solitary rumble. 

_I must get away from them._

“Excuse me, sers,” she said, breaking past them and making for the winding tent paths, where she would be easily lost among the stalls. To her relief, they did not follow, nor did they approach her again once she returned to observe the lists and await her turn. 

Dusk was advancing upon the tourney grounds when a cupbearer came to tell her that her time came. And so she saddled and bridled Promise, and waited aback her tall grey mount as the master of the lists ascended to his pavilion and called her forth by the name Ser Jaime had given: “The Elm Knight,” he shouted to the hush of the crowds. “Who do you challenge?”

Brienne felt her heart pounding in her mouth. She had had the day to think it over and consider a strategy. The reckless thing would be to name one of Renly’s favorites. If she could defeat one of these seasoned knights from the Stormlands or the Reach, she would catapult into favor and secure herself a place in the second day of jousts. But Brienne had never truly faced an opponent at the tilts before -- the only runs she had taken on the courses at Tarth were against jousting dummies and rings -- and if her arm was not strong enough or her aim too poor or her heart too weak, one failure would be enough to ruin her chances. The surer course was to instead call on someone she knew she could beat, someone as green as she was, and advance more slowly through the tourney ranks.

It would also bring her some satisfaction, she decided, to call on someone whose very presence excited her anger. 

She leaned down in her saddle to address the young boy who held Promise’s bridle, and spoke a name.

The boy gave a little nod of his head and released her bridle. He walked several shy steps closer to the pavilion belonging to the master of the lists. 

“The Elm Knight calls Ser Will the Stork,” shouted the boy. 

The crowd gave mixed applause at this. Some even got up from their seats and left the stands, presumably to fetch a drink or quit the day altogether rather than watch two unknown knights attempt to unhorse each other. Still, mystery knights were very often the talk of tourneys, and many more people remained in their seats, eager to see whether this one would give any fight. 

_I will show them,_ thought Brienne, her heart racing with a mixture of fear and glee as Will stalked over to his horse and climbed into his saddle. _I will show him._

They took their places at the south and north ends of the lists, and the young boy who had given her challenge handed her a lance while the crowds looked on. 

“Thank you,” she murmured to him through her helm. He ducked his head in a nod, and moved away from her.

She looked to the pavilion at the center of the lists, where King Renly sat watching. She hefted the lance up in her arm. 

Renly gave a light wave of his hand, prompting the horns to bellow, and Brienne spurred Promise hard with her heels, taking them to a gallop. From the other end of the grassy stretch of field, Will came charging on his bay. Brienne fixed her eyes on his shield and let her arm drop into position, breathing out harshly through her nose, as their horses brought them closer, closer. _Strike,_ she told herself, bracing. _Strike it true._

She had to stop herself from closing her eyes as the impact came driving up through her arm. There was an explosion of wood, and she suddenly could not be sure whether she was still aseat her horse or if she had been torn outside her body altogether when a jolting roar came from the crowds. 

Brienne rode on toward the far stands as Will the Stork tumbled down from his bay. 

Her skin prickled and flamed beneath her armor, and within the cover of her helm, she could feel her mouth pull and clench in a bewildered grin.

The master of the lists announced the victor: “It is the Elm Knight!” Brienne brought Promise trotting past the king’s pavilion, bowing her head to him in courtesy. 

She could not see Renly through her visor as she passed, but as she slowed to a stop and clambered down from the saddle, her heart beating with the joy of her first triumph and her thoughts dizzied and numbed, she did catch a glimpse of another, different face. There, amidst the swell of the crowds lining the lists, was the unmistakable face of Ser Jaime Lannister, looking on. 

…

He discovered her that night in her camp, tending to a small fire.

“Who’s there,” she said as a branch broke beneath his foot.

“Only the Kingslayer,” came Ser Jaime’s lightly mocking voice. 

He ducked into view. His right hand was bandaged and hung from a sling that looped around his neck. 

“May I share your fire?” he said.

When she said nothing, he seated himself across from her nonetheless.

For a long moment, they sat in silence. The fire crackled between them, sending motes of embers floating up toward the canopy, beyond which lay a silky night sky that was studded with stars. 

The Lannister’s company was strangely restful that evening, like that of an old friend’s, and she found a confused little kernel of happiness open in her chest at the knowledge that he had not only remained but sought her out. Brienne thought he would have surely left King’s Landing in haste after attending to his hand and whatever other business he had in the city, yet here he was across from her. She supposed the comfort she felt in his presence was owed to the journey they had shared and the fact that he was the sole person who knew her in spite of her disguise. Though she could not entirely understand why he had come to her here.

She looked up into his face. 

“Ser, I will repay you the ransom,” she began.

“Pray, don’t,” Jaime broke in, his annoyance plain. “Let it be a gift.”

She sighed out hastily. “Then let me thank you for it,” she said, and he quieted. She took that as his permission, though she eyed him watchfully all the same. “It might have been difficult for me to enter the lists,” she went on. She knew he must have gone to the master of the lists himself and spoken for her. “And I believe your word eased that difficulty.”

Brienne dropped her eyes as she spoke, hiding beneath the fringe of her hair. 

The Lannister regarded her across the flames. Then he rolled his shoulders in a shrug. 

“You did well to choose that underripe hedge knight for a match,” he said, steering them off course from her expressions of gratitude. 

“Thank you.”

“The test will be remaining in your saddle tomorrow, now that the others will have taken interest in you,” he warned.

Brienne thought of the suitors, of their smug faces breaking into laughter at her expense, and of the jolt that had traveled like lightning up her arm as her lance struck Will down. 

“I’ll knock the rest down, too,” she said.

“And how many other tilts have you won before this one today?” Jaime wanted to know.

She felt a rash of heat run to her cheeks as she met his stare. _He can guess I’ve won no others,_ she knew that as well as he. And Jaime was right; she was as green as a leaf, of course. Still, her pride was stung.

“Do not mock me,” she said, clenching her fists against her breeches. “I have had no other chance but this one. And this contest is not simple sport, not to me.”

It was his turn to sigh. 

“Come, I’m tired of fighting,” he said, and as she looked into his eyes she saw that he was not jesting; a fatigue was settled into the handsome features of his face. 

“Why have you come, then,” she asked. The edge had not yet gone out of her voice, and even if Jaime Lannister did not hear it, at the end of her question a dozen other questions hung waiting: Why stay in King's Landing, Why seek me out here, Why linger and lecture me, Why.

She had half a mind to ask them all of him, each in succession, but Jaime muttered, “Gods be good." Firelight danced over his face as he said, "I came to help you, Brienne. If you’ll let me.”


	6. The Weeper

Brienne went to sleep that night in the cover of her tent, while Jaime curled up outside beneath a canopy of stars. 

By early morning, a blanket of clouds had rolled in above the woods, and a light rain was falling. Brienne awoke to the pattering of drops upon the canvas and the sound of Jaime’s footsteps pacing the soft earth.

“Ser Jaime,” she murmured groggily. ”Come inside.” 

Wiping the sleep from her eyes, she shifted to one side of the small tent and pulled her woolen tunic on over her chemise. 

The flap was drawn aside, and a moment later his head bowed through the opening. 

When he only looked in, seeming to hesitate, she moved further away to indicate a space for him. “It’s all right,” she assured, though as she did, the thought occurred to her that if Septa Roelle were to know that Brienne invited any man, much less the Kingslayer, to share a tent with her, the woman would have been scandalized enough to burst into flame. And as Jaime settled in beside her, laying his head onto the crook of his arm and soon falling to sleep, a nervousness did flutter up within her at the impropriety of their nearness and the warmth of his back turned to hers. But Brienne dismissed these anxieties; Jaime could want nothing to do with her, not in that sense, and she found she trusted his quiet, if loyal, disinterest in her. 

The rain quickened, and she fell to sleep again, listening to the rhythm of water and his soft breath, sighing.

…

Some time later, Jaime woke to find the rain had ceased. 

Brienne was outdoors tending to Promise, faraway in thought as she brushed the grey hairs of the stallion’s neck and ran her fingers through the damp, warm channel beneath his mane. 

“He has a calm temperament,” said Jaime, emerging behind her. 

She turned, her shoulders jumping to her ears. “Oh,” she said, dumbly.

But Jaime only smiled. 

“He’s like his master in that sense. You rode well yesterday. Calmly. Not easy to do, when you have your first crowd there to watch you fail.”

Brienne forced her neck to straighten and attempted to look levelly at him. 

Though he was crippled now, and his whole countenance had the lightweightedness of a man hollowed out by grief and pain, it was impossible to look at him and not see the legendary man still there within the frame of his body. Brienne had been a child playing in the meadows of her island when she first heard tales of Ser Jaime Lannister, the boy who at only three-and-ten years won his first tourney melee. She remembered now, looking at this man before her, how much she had once envied him -- only to later despise the thought of him when she grew older and learned of how he slew King Aerys. 

She pushed those discomforting thoughts away, though she promised herself to one day ask him the truth of why he had disgraced himself so. Now was not that moment, she decided. 

Brienne cleared her throat lightly.

“You said you would like to help,” she said. “How would you advise me?” 

He brushed a lock of golden hair from his eyes, thinking. “We will need a strategy, for starters. And not only for the tourney.”

“What do you mean?” she said.

A frown pulled at his mouth. 

“You _are_ an innocent…” he muttered, more to himself than her. 

She bristled at that. “Ser Jaime, if you intend to help me--”

“I didn’t mean offense,” he sighed, pacing several steps away before turning back to her and looking intently into her face. “Brienne, if it isn’t plain to you, you are in a viper’s den. I don’t know what Stannis is planning, but this tourney is a distraction, one that would be very easy to take advantage of, at that.”

She stared at him, faint waves of bewilderment wracking through her. “If you believe King Renly to be in danger, imminently, he should be warned.”

“I tried to get an audience with him, but, as you would suspect, I am recently out of favor with the king and his court. Loras took every pleasure in turning me away.” Jaime shook his head. “Renly was a fool to dismiss the Kingsguard when he took the iron throne, even if he supposed its ranks were tainted.” 

“And was he wrong?” 

The words loosed from her too readily, and plainly they struck Ser Jaime. He turned his stare to her, and her cheeks reddened. 

“I did not mean--” she started.

“You did. Don’t insult me by pretending otherwise,” he said. Some irony crossed his face. “Though no, he was not wrong.”

Traditionally, the Kingsguard served for life. But when Joffrey the Bastard King ascended to the throne, he had dismissed Ser Barristan Selmy on the grounds of old age, the first dismissal of its type since the very foundation of the Kingsguard. Renly’s dismissal by comparison seemed far less controversial to Brienne; it had become clear during the Trial of the Lions that Cersei and Joffrey both had filled the Kingsguard with dishonorable men and tasked them to commit dishonorable deeds. When both Lannisters were sentenced, Renly decreed that he would choose his own guard, and he would raise the Kingsguard again into a place of honor. 

“I...apologize,” said Brienne nonetheless. “I only want to see that he is safe. I will have to get to the king soon, and warn him myself.”

“If you must,” said Jaime. 

She looked into his laughing green eyes, though she saw there was no happiness in them. 

“I do,” she said, slowly. “I must.”

He gave no answer to that, only turning his back to her and looking about their small camp. After a moment, he scooped up her helm from where she had sat with it earlier, polishing its metal. 

“You excited the crowds yesterday, and they will be eager to make wagers on you.” he said. “What you will need to avoid, though, is alerting too much attention to yourself too soon. This morning, take another of the lesser targets. Fossoway, maybe. By looks you have the stronger arm. If you can unseat him, challenge another of your choosing. By your third or fourth fell, if you get that far, your courage will be up. Then you can try one of the true competitors.”

“You believe I can fell that many?” she asked. In the space of their conversation, Brienne had begun to have her doubts. 

He turned again to look at her. One of his brows lifted, then settled again darkly. 

“Perhaps,” was all he said. 

Jaime shifted the helm in his left hand, then held it out to her.

“As for the other matter, well, your position works in your favor. Men can be loose-lipped around strangers,” he said. “Remain hidden behind your armor, and see what you can find out. I’ll do the same.”

…

By the time Brienne made her way to tourney grounds, the first of the day’s tilts had already begun. She found the crowd parted more easily for her than they had the day before, however, with the exception of a gaggle of children who hung about her feet and peered at their reflections in her armor, pointing and chattering to themselves about the Elm Knight. Brienne could tell there was no malice or irony behind their attentions, but their clamoring made her nervous all the same; without her armor, without the fame yesterday’s tilt had brought her, she felt keenly aware they would have only treated her with disdain. _If anyone could see me now, truly see me, they would all be laughing_ , she thought, swallowing hard. She was grateful for the armor, in more ways than one. “Go on,” she grunted at the children, though not ungently, and they scattered. 

The moment the urchins ran off, the viewing stands erupted into cheers, and Brienne looked up in time to see Hyle Hunt riding astride a chestnut mare. He held his lance aloft, laughing, as a Frey man tumbled into the muck behind him. 

_So you deigned to enter._ Brienne’s hand found the pommel of her sword at her hip. _I’ll give you reason to laugh._

As Hunt made his courtesies to the king, she started off through the crowd toward the master of the lists, thinking to make a challenge for Ser Hyle. She had only just reached the pavilion, though, when a challenger broke forth into the lists on a gleaming white destrier, pointing his sword at Hyle. 

“I challenge this man,” shouted the knight.

The challenger wore a suit of sooty armor that gleamed in the bright morning light, and he bore a shield with seven red teardrops on a grey field. Atop his helm was a great plume of cascading red rooster feathers. 

“The Weeper calls forth Ser Hyle Hunt,” announced the master of the lists.

Brienne watched intently as the knights took up their lances at either end of the lists. The white horse of mystery knight who called himself the Weeper pawed its hoof at the earth, striking up flecks of mud onto its brilliant coat. Then the trumpets blared, and the two men ran at each other, their lances tipping toward center, the hooves of the horses pounding a harried beat that thudded in between Brienne’s ears… 

There was a clash of wood on metal. The Weeper’s lance tip landed roughly on Hyle’s shoulder, driving him backwards off of his chestnut, and felling him into the muck with a thundering smack. 

As the crowd roared and the king rose to his feet to applaud the match, the master of the lists turned and looked to her. 

“Did you wish to make a challenge, ser?” 

Brienne sucked in a breath; she had quite forgotten herself. But she gave a stiff bow of her head, thinking. 

Hyle had only just fallen, so there was no use in naming him. Ser Jaime had suggested Fossoway, she recalled. And that might do. But there were others she could name, men just as deserving as Ser Hyle.

The master of the lists watched her expectantly. 

“Ser Mullendore,” she said simply, then turned and went for her horse.

She trounced him easily, and Beesbury and Farrow after him. Ambrose and Big Ben Bushy proved more difficult opponents, taking four and five turns each before she managed to fell them, but fell them she did, and each was more satisfying than the last. She only regretted that she had not had the chance to take Hunt on. _Perhaps in the melee_ , she tried to assure herself, climbing down from the saddle to the refrain of applause from the viewing stands. 

After her joust with Bushy, it was well past midday, and Brienne was beginning to feel her temples pound and her arms and shoulders complain. She went off through the crowds for a cup of ale, hoping as well to discover Ser Jaime and ask him whether he had observed anything of note. Some other, meeker part of her also wondered if he had observed her at the tilts. 

She hoped she had by then proved herself worthy of his eyes, though she found him altogether a mercurial figure. She could not quite fathom what he thought of her, if he thought anything good of her at all. Remembering how he had called her an innocent, she thought glumly, _He thinks me a fool, in all likelihood._ But she had other, worse concerns than what the Kingslayer thought of her, she reminded herself, and she turned down another row of tents in search of him.

Only too soon, though, Brienne found the flaw in their plans; they had not agreed on a place to meet, and though she searched each side of the lists and the nearby pavilions, Jaime was not to be found. 

She was wandering down past a cheery mummer’s tent sewn in cheque, lost in thought, when the sudden rumble of men’s voices halted her in her tracks. 

“You had your share of the reward, as promised,” one was saying to the other. His voice was dark with disdain.

Brienne ducked behind the mummer’s banner, her head pounding. _I know that voice, I think._

“Be that as it may, you didn’t have to fell me on the first run,” complained the other. 

She felt her eyes widen. The second man, she knew for certain. _Ser Hyle._ But who was he with?

Brienne leaned out ever so slightly from behind her hiding place, and as she did she caught sight of them.

The mystery knight who had styled himself as the Weeper stood with his back to her, his helm with its plume of red feathers held beneath his arm. And sure enough there was Hyle beside him, looking battered. Brienne could see his face from where he stood, and she saw that his nose and eye were purpled with bruises. 

“Don’t waste my time, Hunt,” warned the other man. 

She heard Hyle breathe out sharply. 

“Fine,” said the hedge knight, “but tell me, what do you intend to do now that all your other bribes have lost their value? Without Mullendore and Ambrose--”

“What I intend is no concern of yours,” came the haughty voice of the Weeper, quieting Hyle mid-sentence, and Brienne thought again, _No, I know that voice_ , and as she did, he turned his head so that his profile came briefly out of shadow. 

Waves of auburn hair fell over his shoulders, she realized. And she could not mistake that face; it had haunted her enough in her dreams. 

_Red Ronnet._


End file.
